Yvan Colonna is dead. The Corsican detainee, who was seriously injured by another detainee who had attacked him in the Arles prison on March 2 and has since been in a coma, died this Monday in Marseille, several concordant sources confirm to the Parisian. He had been in prison since 2003 for the assassination of Prefect Erignac.
“The family of Yvan Colonna confirms his death this evening at the hospital in Marseille. She asks that her mourning be respected and will not make any comment, ”reacted her lawyer Patrice Spinosi to AFP.
Last Thursday, justice had granted Colonna a suspension of sentence “for medical reasons” to the independence activist. A recurring request from his lawyers, the law providing that a prison sentence can be suspended in the event of a vital prognosis.
On March 2, in Arles prison, Yvan Colonna was very seriously injured by an inmate who attacked him. An attack that had caused a coma in the activist. A judicial investigation for “attempted assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise” was opened on March 6.
An aggression source of tension
The aggression of Yvan Colonna was, in parallel, the detonator of tensions between the state and the Corsican nationalists, frustrated that their victories in the territorial elections of 2015, 2017 and then 2021 did not make their demands come to fruition.
Ten pictures of Yvan Colonna’s attack, taken from the video taken by a prison surveillance camera, were briefly broadcast by France 3 Corse on Thursday evening, leading his lawyers to announce a complaint for “breach of secrecy of instruction”.
“Shame on France 3”, reacted Friday evening Stéphane Colonna, Yvan’s brother, on Twitter, denouncing the decision of “this sinister company to have shown the whole world, and more particularly to (his) family, the images of aggression.